Over at the Detroit News, Hans Bader and I explain why corporations have human rights despite not being human. The reason why? Transaction costs.
This has implications for everything from Intel’s EU antitrust battle to newspapers’ free speech rights.
Your host Richard Morrison welcomes guest co-host Jeremy Lott and Editorial Director Ivan Osorio for Episode 63 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We start with CEI’s FOIA fight with the U.S. Treasury, 7-Eleven’s attempt to give consumers a big gulp of government and the solution to a jobless recovery. We then move on to union pension politics, Ireland’s regrettable embrace of EU hegemony and some scantily-clad Olympic News.
While this speech is mostly hogwash, I am surprised and delighted to be able to find one thing to praise in it:
Later this week, I will work with my colleagues at the G20 to phase out fossil fuel subsidies so that we can better address our climate challenge
This is the right thing to do, for reasons I explained in my recent paper co-written with Sterling Burnett of NCPA (extract follows jump).
While many governments of developed nations argue for a worldwide reduction…
Intel’s defense in its EU antitrust case has taken the surprising line that the company’s human rights were violated. Over at Real Clear Markets, CEI colleague Hans Bader and I take a closer look. We conclude that Intel actually has a pretty good argument.
Corporations have human rights because doing so greatly reduces transaction costs: “suppose your company wants to buy some computer chips from Intel. You could have each shareholder sign the sales contract - good luck finding them all -…
Today’s excerpt from CEI’s film, Policy Peril: Why Global Warming Policies Are More Dangerous Than Global Warming Itself, offers a free-market perspective on Al Gore’s proclamation, at the end of An Inconvenient Truth, that global warming is “a moral issue.”
Considered in the abstract, apart from its context in movie, this is a completely unremarkable statement. Just about all public policy issues can be described as moral issues, because they directly or implicitly ask us to decide whether a proposed course of action is fair or…
Most of us knew that the European Union’s system of farm subsidies, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) gives out huge amounts to farmers in the EU countries. What hasn’t been clear is that a lot of the monies go to businesses only tangentially connected — if at all — with farming.
Now the New York Times has an in-depth article detailing how large sums of CAP money go to such businesses as asphalt manufacturers, and to such people as the Queen…
Your faithful host Richard Morrison welcomes back special guest co-hosts William Yeatman and Michelle Minton for Episode 46 (listen HERE!). We start with the investors that are getting worked over by the politically-distorted bankruptcy of Chrysler, the ascension of the Swedish Pirate Party to the European Parliament and the Great Porn Wall of China. We then move on to proof that beer is better for you than water, a sign that airline travel may get more expensive, and an example of how voters deal…
Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist bring back special guest co-host Jeremy Lott to create the work of art known as Episode 42. We start with the continuing buzz over the Supreme Court’s next member, President Obama’s trillion dollar healthcare plan, and an update on how Hugo Chávez is turning Venezuela’s petroleum reserves into his personal piggybank. We add good news from East Texas for beer drinkers, bad news from Europe for technophiles and sad news from Philly for basketball fans.
Listen to the episode HERE.
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In The American Spectator, former CEI Bastiat Scholar Doug Bandow (now at the Cato Institute) describes how “[o]nly the Irish people and Czech President Vaclav Klaus” stand as “formidable obstacles” in the way of Eurocrats’ dream of political consolidation — and how fanciful that dream is to begin with.
After winning some theoretical concessions, essentially promises to make future changes, on issues of interest to Irish voters, the government in Dublin announced plans to hold a revote later this year. Current…
In today’s Guardian, Juliana Glover reports that carbon permit prices in Europe’s Emission Trading System (ETS) have crashed from €31 last summer to €8 today. This price is too low to create any incentive for covered entities to invest in ‘green’ technology.
I wrote recently of California’s declaration to allow tropical forestry carbon offsets so that California businesses wouldn’t have to actually reduce their emissions, but I suggested that guilt-laden Californians could be doing more harm than good. The countries where they will supposedly be investing in forests have proven records for corruption.
I now feel vindicated. Reuters Africa reports that yesterday at the EU climate talks:
Brazil ruled out on Thursday letting rich countries offset their greenhouse gas emissions by helping to save the Amazon rain…
Nothing horrifies the New Class of bureaucrats, intellectuals, politicians, and activists than an aroused public dedicated to defeating their plans. The Irish vote against the Lisbon Treaty, which would create a stronger, consolidated government for the continent, shocked Europe’s political elite, who are pushing for Ireland’s government to stage a revote, or simply override the voters. The latest argument being made is that approving Lisbon would empower Europe to confront Russia on security issues. It’s a silly claim, since the Treaty will deliver…
Some thoughts on why our side is losing in its efforts to promote and defend free trade:
From the time of the GATT onward, the primary approach to trade liberalization has been based on mercantilistic arguments. What will another nation sacrifice to gain the right to benefit our consumers? That approach — always based on real-politics - not intellectual considerations arguably worked in a world where rent-seeking was limited, where the trade negotiation entity (the GATT) was weak, when the focus…
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